The Academic Left’s Love of Violence

Now and then, as with the recent career of the repellent and evil Chris Dorner, somebody comes along who hits all the right buttons for the academic left and lets all the their creepy love of extreme violence come spurting out. Dorner managed to combine all the normal shibboleths about race, militarism, class war, gun control, Obama adoration, and even hatred of the Church (he wanted to kill Mahony) into the just the right cocktail of PC tropes to let demented leftist academics lionize him for his shooting spree. This is a man who murdered a young woman and her betrothed for the crime being related to some guy he was angry at, as well as a couple of cops. But fools on the Left, who but a few months ago were seriously trying to blame Sarah Palin’s infographics for the nutjob who shot Gabby Giffords, are now squirming with barely contained sexual ecstacy over this psycho and comparing him to Django Unchained.

Here, young college student. You need this book. It will save you from an awful lot of folly:

Just click on the cover and you can order this magical ticket to intellectual sanity in a sea of academic lunacy. You’re welcome!

I don’t think this is as much a Left/Right thing as it is a race/racism thing. There are people that do see Chris Dorner as a hero because they’re focusing on the “manifesto”, the message, and what they find exciting is him “getting back at the system”. It’s not the violence per se, it’s the revenge, or as they see it – someone who’s been wronged who is standing up against the system and actually doing something about it. There are a lot of blacks in America with a chip on their shoulders, police brutality is a problem, and I’m sure sometimes it stems from racism….so I don’t think this problem is ever going to go away….

Mark Shea

It’s hard for me to feel too much pity for the wrongs suffered by a comfy academic with a gig on TV who is probably headed for tenure–all while he cheers for a butcher who killed an Asian man’s *daughter* in order to spite the father. The fools who cheered for this fiend are fiends and/or idiots themselves. In a decent world, that academic would be out of a job this morning.

Andy, Bad Person

It’s also clear that anyone cheering his manifesto either didn’t read it to the end, or is dishonestly cherry-picking it. It actually starts out like a lucid criticism of the injustice of the LAPD, but soon devolves into paranoid fantasy. It is clearly the ramblings of someone who had no business in law enforcement, a time bomb looking for an excuse to kill.

Kirt Higdon

I don’t think Dorner was as much racist as violently anti-police. His first two victims were an ethnic Chinese woman (the daughter of a cop) and her black fiance. The two whites he killed were cops; white civilians he either let go or just tied up. The police reaction to all this was pretty inexcusable. They shot at and wounded two older Latinas and shot at and rammed a white surfer; in both cases these people were driving pick-ups somewhat similar although not of the same make and color as Dorner’s. Dorner was burned out using “pyrotechnic” tear gas to the glee of the cops on the scene as indicated by their radio transmissions. It reminds one of the Waco massacre (another use of pyrotechnic tear gas), the fiery death of the SLA terrorists, and the bombing and burning of the Move people in Philadelphia. Dorner’s manifesto called for gun control and in more than one way he made a case for it. His end certainly belied the argument that being heaviy armed is a good defense against the government. The rulers are always better armed and more ruthless; that’s how they got to be rulers. Now if there was only a way we could disarm the rogue cops, both those off and still on the force. Probably not. There’s no better defense than the “Don’t shoot. I’m not Dorner” signs and bumper stickers briefly in vogue in Southern California before Dorner was killed. Meantime, pray for the repose of the souls of both him and his victims.

Blog Goliard

I am so glad I have no idea who this guy Dorner might be (or might have been).

It’s not just ideology that’s melting peoples’ brains here. It’s cable news. In a sane world, no one outside of southern California (and few even within southern California) would ever have learned his name.

the academic right’s love of violence helped get us into iraq
just sayin’.

Patrick

There’s an academic right?

Chris M

yeah.. that one was kind of softballed in there.. and Patrick goes yard.

Claude

So a grotesque remark from some prof at Colombia becomes The Academic Left’s Love of Violence? Wow. Who knew whats-his-name is so encompassing.

Chris M

Are we talking about Gary Wills again?

Frank McManus

Mark, sometimes you’re so insightful, other times you act like you’ve lost your mind. This is one of the latter. First, Rod Dreher ignores Marc Lamont Hill’s explicit condemnation of Dorner’s evil acts, then you up the ante by attributing Hill’s supposed delight in Dorner’s violence to the entire academic left. It’s beyond absurd.

Facts: Hill does not glorify or enjoy Dorner’s violence; he’s discussing the cultural significance of Dorner as people reacted to him in the media, and he’s saying this reaction raises important questions. Agree or disagree with him, fine. But what Hill did is not even remotely pro-violence.

I recommend you read any standard college textbook on critical thinking, Mark. Or maybe just take a deep breath before hitting the POST button. Seriously, man. This is just idiocy of the first order.